{"id":12063,"date":"2019-05-31T16:06:38","date_gmt":"2019-05-31T20:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=12063"},"modified":"2019-06-01T06:47:47","modified_gmt":"2019-06-01T10:47:47","slug":"craig-bailey-aids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/05\/31\/craig-bailey-aids\/","title":{"rendered":"Craig Bailey\u2019s \u2018Faces of AIDS\u2019 Photographs Of \u2018My Friends That I Lost \u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the 1990s, when Boston photographer Craig Bailey began taking the portraits that would become “The Faces of AIDS”\u201410 black and white photos on view at Medicine Wheel<\/a> in Boston through July 1, 2019\u2014they were just photos of friends and colleagues.<\/p>\n

“The older folks, I didn’t have any idea [that they had AIDS]. These were my friends doing this work,\u201d Bailey says. \u201cWe were all just out doing what we do, doing our work and enjoying it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Robert-Ian<\/a>
Robert-Ian Schlesinger from Craig Bailey’s “The Faces of AIDS” portrait photographs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There\u2019s a photo of Boston Police officer Robert-Ian Schlesinger on duty, smiling, around 1993, at Pride Day on Boston City Hall Plaza. “I had no idea” that he had AIDS. “All I knew was I had a crush on him,\u201d Bailey recalls. The Boston Globe had written about Robert, but “They had this horrible photo of him.” Then Bailey met him in real life at a community meeting: “gorgeous.”<\/p>\n

Schlesinger had been a Marine before serving in the Boston Police Department’s Mounted Unit\u00a0and later its Community Disorders Unit, investigating hate crimes.\u00a0Norman Hill, who followed Schlesinger in the liaison position, wrote of Schlesinger for a 1997 exhibition of the portraits: “This venue inspired one of his greatest acts of courage\u2014he came out of the closet, announcing to the Department that he was gay. He was then appointed to be the Boston Police Department’s first openly gay liaison to the gay and lesbian community, tirelessly advocating for gay and lesbian civil rights. … Robert was a trailblazer\u2014he cleared the trail of intolerances and injustice within the halls of our police department.”<\/p>\n

For the 1997 exhibition, Catherine Joseph wrote for David Johnson’s portrait: “A few days before David died, he called me up and said, ‘You know, the doctor says I only have a few more days to live, as my heart can’t take it anymore. I’ll probably go during one of my dialysis sessions.’ I was paralyzed with fear and foreboding. … I felt powerless to control the fires that determined my friend’s death.”<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a commissioned portrait of Wayne Wright. “Wayne was a good friend,\u201d Bailey says and then sighs. “And formerly director of the Multicultural AIDS Coalition. We didn’t find out about his status until Wayne was hospitalized right before his death. He had cancer. One of the nosy people in our group read his chart and found out. We just never knew.”<\/p>\n

And this is part of what makes the photo series standout. These aren’t grim photos of victims on their death beds. These are portraits of friends, most of them smiling. This is before, when they were still healthy, still in their prime.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Faces of AIDS,\u201d Bailey says, \u201cwasn\u2019t a project. It came out of that point in time and looking around. I thought I had not been affected by this. \u2026 Surprise, yes, you were.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Craig<\/a>
Craig Bailey with his “The Faces of AIDS” portrait photographs at Medicine Wheel in South Boston, May 17, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bailey is a “kid from the projects.” He grew up in New York City\u2019s Baisley Park Houses, living with his mom. “I’ve never had money.” After studying business in college, he landed a job as a customer service rep in the Boston suburbs for an auto manufacturer and moved outside Boston in 1982. When the company offered him a buyout in 1989, he decided to “Let me do a reboot here. \u2026 I’m going to move to Boston to be with the freaks and the weirdoes.”<\/p>\n

With the buyout, Bailey pursued photography in earnest. He studied with Cambridge photographer Jeff Dunn at Boston Center for Adult Education and then became Dunn\u2019s assistant for a time\u2014learning how to print photos in a dark room, learning the ins and outs of the business. Bailey began photographing for nonprofits (“basically giving the work away”) and for Byron Rushing\u2019s 1990 state representative campaign. (These days, he mainly makes his living photographing events and theatrical performances.)<\/p>\n

Bailey took jobs on the side to supplement his limited photography income. “A lot of the community work was directly about or certainly included AIDS education. A lot of these people I met through the community outreach. They were friends. They were colleagues. They were extended family,” he says. He met many of them at AIDS Action Committee’s annual Bayard Rustin Community Breakfast in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n

\"Craig<\/a>
Craig Bailey’s “The Faces of AIDS” portrait photographs at Medicine Wheel in Boston’s South End, May 17, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bailey recalls, “In the early ’80s, that was the first, second, third wave of these [AIDS] deaths. At this point in time, they had come out with AZT and the cocktail. So it seemed like things were getting progressing. It was getting a little bit better as far as treatment and people being able to live a while longer.”<\/p>\n

Bailey photographed the portraits in “Faces of AIDS” between 1990 and ’97. “At this moment in time, it was the later part of all-hands-on-deck. I felt I had missed that moment of death personally. People were talking about how they had lost all their friends. I guess I’m lucky I’ve lost only a few. And then there was this wave. Woosh. All gone.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just kind of blindsided me a little bit,\u201d Bailey says. \u201cLike Sidney [Borum Jr.] was a good friend. We had been hanging out. He had been coping with various illnesses and challenges. Then there was a time when I was trying to get him on the phone. I wasn’t understanding. Then I found out he had died. I was like, ‘What? We were just hanging out. He was okay.'”<\/p>\n

\"Tim<\/a>
Tim Bennett from Craig Bailey’s “The Faces of AIDS” portrait photographs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bailey says, “Other people see it as an exhibition. I see it as my friends that I lost on the wall. It’s hard for me.” He originally exhibited the photos in 1997 at Cambridge Center for Adult Education. At the time, the photos of Belynda Dunn and Patrick Francis Murphy were in color to indicate that they were still alive. “They both wrote their own texts to go with the images. The other texts were written by friends or associates.”<\/p>\n

Dunn, then 46, wrote, “I’ve known my HIV status since February of 1991. It was devastating news to me simply because, at the time, there were so few people of color\u2014especially women\u2014out about their HIV status. I had no support in my community to fall back on. It seemed then, and still seems now, as though it’s been more acceptable for men to be infected than women.”<\/p>\n

Murphy recalled getting tested for the disease in 1985: “I was in the highest risk category. I didn’t give much thought to the test until the news came of a positive result. OK, no problem, I thought. I’ll just wash it out of my body and mind with lots of drugs, booze, recklessness and denial. And a bit of self pity. That always seemed to work. … Well, none of it did\u2014and never will. …\u00a0It inspired me to begin a first-of-its-kind wish granting foundation (For The Love of Life) for people and families who are living with the virus. I decided to get on with life because I had a lot of living to do.”<\/p>\n

In 1997, Bailey says, \u201cIt was a lot closer to the time where people had died. It was just a way of continuing the conservation about the impact, about recognizing the amazing people we had lost to AIDS, and just honoring their memories.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the 1997 exhibition, Bailey says, \u201cI put it up on the shelf.\u201d He stored the matted photos in a closet in his South End apartment. \u201cLiterally out of sight, out of mind. I know it\u2019s there. Don\u2019t need to take it out and look at it. I did take pieces out here and there. It\u2019s just too traumatic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Craig<\/a>
Craig Bailey’s “Faces of the AIDS Crisis” photos 1991-1997.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So Bailey didn\u2019t publicly exhibit the photos between 1997 and last fall, when they were featured in \u201cNine Moments for Now\u201d at the Cooper Gallery at Harvard University\u2019s Hutchins Center in Cambridge. Artist, curator and activist Kathleen Bitetti remembered and promoted Bailey\u2019s photos, encouraging artist and Harvard curator Dell Hamilton to check them out. Harvard made new prints from his old negatives. Then Bitetti arranged the current Medicine Wheel exhibition.<\/p>\n

Bailey says, \u201cIt\u2019s just very profound and humbling to see how it resonates with people. It\u2019s a reminder to me that you can\u2019t take it and sit on it because it makes you uncomfortable or it\u2019s imperfect or whatever. It transcends the limitations I have imposed on it. \u2026 It\u2019s a reminder that it\u2019s not about me.\u201d<\/p>\n

AIDS \u201cis still here. This is still an issue,\u201d the 61-year-old photographer says. He hopes the photos \u201cremind people of the impact of AIDS at that point in time and how it decimated a number of communities with amazing bright incredible people who were doing incredible work. We have suffered tremendous losses. We have lost people who had incredible abilities and capabilities that were unique. You don\u2019t necessarily get that back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bailey says, \u201cAt this point in time, young people don\u2019t know the impact of the trauma of the initial wave of this and some of them are of the opinion that this is a manageable chronic condition. But you don\u2019t know the reality of that. It\u2019s easy to say. I imagine there\u2019s a generation of people who don\u2019t know what it\u2019s like to have intimate relationships without a condom. What about spontaneity?\u201d<\/p>\n

How did Bailey survive the dying years? \u201cBy the grace of God,\u201d he says. \u201cAnother thing from that time\u2014just abject fear. They were saying into this century that the incubation was 10 years. I knew what I\u2019d done. I knew what I shouldn\u2019t have done.\u201d Many times he thought to himself, \u201cOh, my God, how am I still alive?\u201d<\/p>\n

Previously:<\/strong> \u2018What Does Winning Look Like?\u2019\u2014Cooper Gallery\u2019s Riveting Look At Blackness During Trump, #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

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In the 1990s, when Boston photographer Craig Bailey began taking the portraits that would become “The Faces of AIDS”\u201410 black and white photos on view at Medicine Wheel in Boston through July 1, 2019\u2014they were just photos of friends and colleagues. “The older folks, I didn’t have any idea [that they had AIDS]. These were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12138,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[487,577],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12063"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12063"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12195,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12063\/revisions\/12195"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}